By Jen Lynds
Bangor Daily News
HOULTON, Maine — A Hodgdon man accused of severely burning a 4-year-old boy when he put him in a tub of scalding water has been acquitted by a judge of felony assault.
When he was arrested last October, Shane Godfrin, 26, denied that the incident was intentional. But he gave multiple stories to police about how the second-degree burns on the boy’s legs occurred, and the mother of the child covered for Godfrin at one point, according to testimony presented during the trial last month in Houlton Superior Court.
The 4-year-old victim, whose name is not being released, lived in the home with Godfrin and his mother, Elizabeth Scott, who was in a relationship with Godfrin. Scott and Godfrin’s 5-month-old son also lived in the home.
Godfrin, who was released on $1,000 bail, and Scott were still residing together as a couple when the jury-waived trial was held on March 11, but the 4-year-old boy had gone to live with Scott’s mother.
Scott testified last month that Godfrin called her at work on March 16, 2014, to tell her that he had started a bath for her older son and then went to change their 5-month-old’s diaper. He told her he then heard the older boy screaming and ran to the bathroom to find he had fallen out of the tub, saying the water was too hot.
Scott testified that the couple turned off their hot water heater each night to save money. She also said someone had been into their home to repair the breaker on their hot water heater.
She admitted upon questioning from Assistant District Attorney Kurt Kafferlin that when she first was questioned by a Department of Human Services caseworker, she told the staff that she had given her son the bath that had burned him.
“I was scared,” she said. “I was nervous that [Godfrin] would go to jail for leaving the water running.”
Dr. Lawrence Ricci, a child abuse pediatrician and co-director of the Spurwink Child Abuse Program in Portland, testified that the second-degree scalding injuries suffered by the child were “inflicted immersion burns.”
He testified the child’s legs were burned in a “sock like pattern” and that there was no reasonable explanation for it other than the burns being inflicted by an adult in the home. Ricci also said any child who normally stepped into a tub of water that hot and was not being held in the water would have hopped out.
Justice E. Allen Hunter, who presided over the one day bench trial, took a little over a month to issue a ruling in the case.
In his decision, which was entered into court records on April 20, Hunter wrote that he believed Godfrin gave “inconsistent and untruthful accounts” about what had happened to the boy to state police and sheriff’s office detectives and to a social worker. He also wrote that Ricci provided the “clearest and most credible explanation” about what happened to the child.
“The court finds most likely that the boy suffered his injuries when the defendant placed him, feet first, in three to four inches of standing, very hot water,” Hunter wrote.
But he said that he ruled not guilty because the state had not proved that Godfrin had a guilty state of mind at the time, a key component of proving the charge. Hunter said the state offered no proof that Godfrin was a severe disciplinarian with the boy or other children, did not like the boy or was upset with him, or that the boy was misbehaving or out of control that day, causing Godfrin to become overwhelmed and angry and punish him so severely.
Hunter also wrote that there was no proof that Godfrin caused the child’s injuries recklessly, such as by knowing the bathtub water would likely be too hot and putting him in anyway.
He concluded that Godfrin most likely inflicted the injuries by his “negligent inattention to the bath water” and called his failure to protect the child “deplorable.”
Kafferlin said April 21 that he can “never tell” which way a judge or jury will go in a case.
“We presented the evidence, and it is up to the court to interpret it,” he said.
Defense Attorney Cathy Lufkin represented Godfrin.
